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Hey, thanks for stopping by my little journal dedicated to the various wildlife themed observations and thoughts that fill my days. Since I can remember, I've been fascinated by the animal kingdom. Some of these leave me intrigued, others shocked and many just plain baffled. Here's to wildlife and the things they do.

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On the Warpath

I interrupt the regularly scheduled programming on LifeIntrigued to bring you this late breaking update! This month is pretty much dedicated to our first visit up to the International Crane Foundation near Baraboo, Wisconsin. Figured it was time to give you a quick break from all those awesome Cranes and thought I’d go with something completely different – Devil Spawn! Every Spring there’s a war of sorts that plays out on my lot. During the Winter months, those evil looking creatures they refer to as MOLES are free to go about their business. Normally there isn’t much activity after the late fall, but looks like this year they decided to take advantage of the long and deep snow season to launch an all out assault on my yard. As mentioned before, I openly admit I went and plopped down my house in the middle of their land. Because of that intrusion I let the native creatures be as long as they stay out of my yard area. Pretty fair of me right? Once the snow melt it became apparent that this agreement had been breached by the damn tunnel diggers – they had tunnels EVERYWHERE. Tracks in the front yard, tracks in the side yard and multiple tracks in my backyard. Red Rover red Rover come tunnel your way over.

I decided to give them one warning shot in hopes they get the picture. Foregoing the traps, all the tunnels were tamped back down with clenched teeth and streams of vulgarity. Sure they would heed this warning wouldn’t they….

NOT! In just about every case the mounds were back within the week. Bastards, pure clown loving bastards. There was only one thing left to do – you got it… Bring out Nihil and Rev (link here). First task was the front yard menace. Went with Nihil due to his experience and effectiveness shown during last year’s hunt (link here). Within 2 to 3 hours of re-tamping all but the main tunnels and setting Nihil’s trigger the first shot was taken. Another kill and another notch to add to the side of Nihil. On hellspawn went to meet its maker (although in that shot it looks like he is looking in the WRONG direction.

We aren’t done yet .. hit the jump to see more carnage.

Next up came the backyard menace. This particular mole was extremely destructive creating a circular travel tunnel (first time I’ve witnessed that) with radiated feeding tunnels around the entire loop. Ugh. It took about 30 minutes just to get the feeder tunnels stomped down before setting Nihil up for a second run at it. The next day I came home to trigger released. Two for Two!

Only one more to go on the side of the house. I had actually set Rev up there when I set Nihil up in the backyard. It too had the trigger released but somehow that clever mole managed to escape. Rev had a pretty disappointing first outing. I reset Rev but added Nihil to the other end. A smart mole is a force to be reckoned with. Two days later both traps were triggered again. This was immediately an odd situation. Either two moles were using the same travel tunnels which is very rare (they are pretty territorial) or one of them failed. Hoping for redemption I pulled up Rev first – NOPE – 0 for two. Time to have a talk with Rev. Quickly moving to Nihil pointed out why he’s the go to dude.

3 for 3 – a trifecta of death. Note, I might have my images mixed up a bit – they were taken on my phone which seems to have some bad sectors on the micro SD card – results still the same, three dead moles all thanks to their refusal to obey the lot rules. Linda had company over this week and thus refused to let me put them on little pikes as a warning to the other moles out there – she thought it might give a bad impression – phewie on that, with the possible exception of surburbanites we’d be cheered!